Last month at JREF’s The Amaz!ng Meeting in Las Vegas, 3 SBM bloggers along with Rachael Dunlop of Australia participated in a panel on “The Truth About Alternative Medicine.” The video is now available on Youtube. It’s a chance for readers to see Steven Novella, David Gorski and Harriet Hall and hear them speak instead of just reading what they write.

My book Women Aren’t Supposed to Fly: The Memoirs of a Female Flight Surgeon is now available as a Kindle file for $3.99. If you don’t have a Kindle device, there is a free download so you can play Kindle files on your computer or iPad.

Some readers may remember my mentioning it on SBM 4 years ago in the context of an article on women in medicine. A lot of people prefer to read books electronically these days, so I thought I’d let you know.

For decades Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions was the only textbook available for college classes on the subject, and it is still the best: the most comprehensive and the most reliable. It was first published in 1976, and it has clearly had staying power. An updated 9th edition has just been released. The authors have changed over the years: this edition’s authors are Stephen Barrett, William London, Manfred Kroger, Harriet Hall, and Robert Baratz. It’s an invaluable compendium of information that would be useful to any consumer, and it’s unfortunate that McGraw-Hill is marketing it as an expensive textbook ($163).

What exactly is “consumer health”? The book’s preface and the table of contents are available here. They will provide the long answer to that question. The short answer is:

The book’s fundamental purpose is to provide trustworthy information and guidelines to enable people to select health products and services intelligently. (more…)

The 6th World Skeptics Congress will be held on May 18-20 in Berlin, Germany. Topics will include: Why do people turn to pseudoscience for help? What makes alternative medicine so attractive – and how can we find out what really works? Why is it so difficult for us to deal with risk and uncertainty in a rational way? Can we teach children to think critically and scientifically? And how can academic disciplines like biology or psychology protect themselves from pseudoscientific contamination?

I’m traveling this week, checking out pharmacy practice internationally, and looking for signs of science-based medicine. Instead of a post, here are the links to two podcasts I recently recorded that will be of interest to SBM readers. Sit back, press play, and enjoy.

Point of Inquiry: Dispensing Skepticism

I recently spoke with Karen Stollznow for the Point of Inquiry podcast. This discussion focused on the role of the pharmacist and the need for science-based pharmacy practice. We touched on a lot of issues including the changing role of the pharmacist, the ethical responsibilities of pharmacists when it comes to products like homeopathy, what compounding pharmacies do, what generic drugs are, what an expiry date means, what pharmacists think about vitamins and other supplements, and more. You can listen to the podcast here.

Many of the SBM blogger are at The Amazing Meeting 9 this week – or TAM9 From Outer Space, as it is whimsically called. The JREF, who sponsors TAM, is a big supporter of our efforts at SBM and, in fact, as of this year co-sponsors this blog along with the New England Skeptical Society (both non-profits).

This year, as with the last two TAMs, there will be a workshop on SBM. The topic is, “Oh no, not again! – Recurring themes in medical mythology.” David Gorski, Kimball Atwood, Harriet Hall, Mark Crislip and I decided to discuss the most common recurrent themes in unscientific or philosophy-based medicine (which is much of what passes for CAM). The core idea of the workshop is that the same basic themes keep cropping up again and again in CAM modalities. They may contain slight variations on the basic theme, but mostly are just the same thing with a different superficial window dressing.

So, for example, many systems are based upon the common theme of “energy medicine” – the notion that there is a life force or life energy that is responsible for health, and blockages in the flow or power of this energy cause “unwellness.” Modalities as apparently distinct as straight chiropractic, acupuncture, and Reiki are all based on this pre-scientific idea.

It has just been announced, in the July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, that our own Steven Novella has been awarded the 2010 Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking. It will be formally presented at the CSIcon conference in New Orleans on October 28, 2011. The Prize is a $1500 award given to the author of the published work or body of work that best exemplifies healthy skepticism, logical analysis, or empirical science. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) selects the publication that, in its judgment, has the greatest potential to create positive reader awareness of currently important scientific concerns. Previous awards starting in 2005 were for individual publications. In Dr. Novella’s case, the award was for his entire body of work. In the letter informing him of his selection, CSI Executive Director Barry Karr said,

…you are being honored for your tremendous body of work including The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, Science-Based Medicine, Neurologica, your SKEPTICAL INQUIRER column “The Science of Medicine,” as well as your tireless travel and lecture schedule on behalf of skepticism. You may well be the hardest worker in all of skepticism today. And to me, the truly amazing thing is you do all of this on a volunteer basis.

He is also the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society, a fellow of CSI, a founding fellow of the Institute for Science in Medicine, a medical advisor to Quackwatch, a contributor to other blogs, has produced a course for The Teaching Company on “Medical Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths,” and is Senior Fellow and Director of the James Randi Educational Foundation’s (JREF) new Science-Based Medicine project. And I have undoubtedly omitted several of his other accomplishments.

It is hard to believe he hasn’t cloned himself, since all of these achievements are in addition to his demanding day job as a clinical neurologist, assistant professor, and director of general neurology at Yale University School of Medicine.

Congratulations, Steve! The award couldn’t have gone to a better candidate. I want to add my personal thanks for all you do and say how proud I am to be associated with you. You da man!

The SBM website is now a joint project of the New England Skeptical Society (who founded SBM) and the JREF – two non-profit educational organizations dedicated to promoting the public understanding of science. I am delighted that the JREF is making SBM a priority, and we all look forward to working closely with them in promoting high standards of science in medicine and improved public understanding of the relationship between science and the practice of medicine.

As part of this new relationship I have accepted a position at the JREF of Senior Fellow and Director of their Science-Based Medicine project.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want you all to tune in to The Dr. Oz Show on Tuesday, April 26. Either that, or DVR it. Why am I asking you to do this? Have I lost my mind? Have I suddenly gone woo? Of course not. The reason is that, an episode I’ve been waiting for since I learned it was in the works last week will air on that date.

I do worry a bit how the producers edited Steve’s segment, though. Look at the promo. In it Dr. Oz is doing what I was afraid of, trying to portray himself as the voice of reason and accusing Steve of being “dismissive.” I was afraid Dr. Oz would play the “don’t be close-minded” or “you’re too dismissive” card, and he appears to have done it. Then get a load of the advertised segment that follows, showing Dr. Oz dictating what’s true and not in medicine, as in “Dr. Oz approved.”

Truly, the man has no shame.

I’ll have to wait until Tuesday to see what the final results are. Whatever happens, we at SBM are all incredibly proud of Steve for going into the proverbial lions’ den. As managing editor, I’m also enormously proud of our stable of bloggers; after all, it is a collective effort that got us noticed by the producers of The Dr. Oz Show. Also, now that Dr. Oz and his producers have noticed us, however the segment turns out we promise to keep holding Dr. Oz’s feet to the fire when he starts promoting nonsense like faith healers, psychic mediums, dubious diabetes treatments, and über-quacks like Joe Mercola. This should be facilitated by our new partnership with the James Randi Educational Foundation that was announced earlier this week.

Here’s something for you all to check out. Trine Tsouderos, the journalist from The Chicago Tribune who’s distinguished herself as being one of the few reporters who “gets it” when it comes to quackery and the anti-vaccine movement (just put her name in the search box of this blog for some examples) will be hosting a web chat about vaccines featuring none other than Dr. Paul Offit, one of the gutsiest (if not the gutsiest) defender of vaccine science out there. The chat will occur here at noon CDT today. Questions can be submitted in advance to Tsouderos at [email protected].

Head on over, everyone. The anti-vaccine movement is clearly out in force in the comments. Although the usual intrepid defenders of science are there, reinforcements are always welcome.